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The Gospel According to TED:
Preaching after “Ideas Worth Spreading ”
Laura Cunningham
Nauraushaun Presbyterian Church, Pearl River, New ¥©rk
أam a glutton آﻟﺔthe spoken word. My cravings are satisfied best by news, lectures, talk shows, storytelling, poetry, and sermons, all prepared medium well to well done. In the pulpit I try to manage my habit, although stories from “The Moth” and ‘‘^ i s American Life,” and now TED, inevitably sneak up. A few years ago, a friend sent me a link to Brené Brown,s TED talk on vulnerability ,* introducing me to the cross-disciplinary cuisine of speakers with “ideas worth spreading,” and I’ve been feasting ever since. Recorded talks before live audience from poets, presidents, a sociologist who accompanied sanitation workers, a photographer who depicted a repentant warlord, a brain scientist describing her own stroke, a lawyer advocating for social justice in Alabama criminal courts, a fashion model explaining why looks aren’t everything-all are available for free on the TED website or as podcasts. I can watch at my desk ٢٠on television or listen in my car ٢٠ at my kitchen sink. While I began watching TED talks for personal enjoyment, the approach to speaking began to infiltrate my preaching, to the point that for me TED has become a new pantty of resources for my approach to homiletics. TED began in 1984 as a conference featuring innovations in technology, entertainment , and design (TED) but has grown into a series offilmed lectures, a platform for a wide array of thinkers and activists to share their most innovative ideas worth spreading. Speakers have around eighteen minutes to combine stories, experiences, images, facts, insight, and humor and thus persuade their audience. Talks appeared online for free in2006,andaNovember 12,2014TEDBlog post announced one billion views, at a rate of potentially 1.5 million times a day. Many videos are available in more than forty languages. These statistics suggest not that TED is the sliced bread of spoken word nor a preacher’s panacea, but that people are hungry for words that speak to their minds and hearts, and they will keep watching and listening if they are fed. In other words, pay attention, preacher! While they feature Billy £fraham,Rick Warren,and James Forbes,as well asahost of other religious scholars and philosophers, TED talks are not sermons ﺀع ־/ﺀم .More often, speakers function as secular evangelists for a particular cause ٢٠community, blending personal testimony, persuasion, and expertise for the sake of individual and social transformation. Despite critique that the TED format is too controlled ٢٠the audience too elite, the web site provides access to diverse speakers and topics and elicits comments from around the world, including developing nations. Talks are packaged for easy online streaming, podcasting, linking, and sharing, as their voices go into the world and make followers of all kinds of people. While they have neither central texts nor a focused faith community, effective TED speakers blend ideas and lived experience, research with testimony, spoken words with an embodied word, all for the sake of hope, change, ٢٠a call to action. They pay carefitl attention to their choice of words and images as well as to how they speak and move, all for foe sake of calling foe audience to act or hope anew. I
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find the rhetorical approaehes in toe TED examples to he effective yet distinct from toe homiletical approaches I learned, nevertheless offering practical application tor preaching. Given toe breadth of TED material, however, this article is simply a teaser, ending in a list of a few talks for starters. Like a restaurant review, may it whet preachers’ appetites enough that they have to taste it for themselves. ?reachers’ most significant learning from TED will come with attention to how speakers craft, embody, and visually reinforce their words and stories. The most powerfirl TED speakers assume directness. The tone of toe talk is informal but pol- ؛shed, and the choice of content assumes toe audience has critical thinking skills and knowledge of social issues. Despite toe range and depth of their expertise, speakers choose words assuming a lay audience. They use jargon sparingly, and if so, only for toe sake of moving the audience in a desired direction. Amy Cuddy, a business school psychologist, describes toe effect of “power positions,” or toe body postores and movements that give a person confidence and authority in a stressfirl sitoation. She explains toe academic phrase “non-verbals” in a simple, unthreatening manner, noting that in her profession, that’s toe term for unspoken communication.2 Another well watched speaker,SimonSinek,uses “limbic system”to describe whythe message of influential leaders connects with a deeper, non-linguistic level in human brains. He also uses a simple diagram and translates it into everyday terms, describing toe limbic system as how people know what feels right, even when they can’t explain it in words.^ These two speakers, among many others, model how to use words that may at first seem foreign or off-putting to sermon listeners, particularly those new to ظ؛م (think repentance ٢٠salvation). Recognizing potential lingo, “ ٢٠churchy words” as one of my congregants calls them, preachers may observe as others translate without insulting a hearer’s intelligence or choosing to forgo a crucial term. Other toan word selection, the craft grows oto of how speakers give testimony. The most effective talks provide data, whether in the form of statistics, facts, research, ٢٠anecdotes, but for toe persons speaking, toe data is so compelling that they must tell how it has affected them, almost always for toe sake ofhope for toe fhture, growth of mind ٢٠spirit, ٢٠a call to action. In her first TED talk, referenced above and as of toe date of this writing viewed over sixteen million times, researcher/storyteller Brené Brown combines insight and humor to show how her study of what helps people live with a sense ofworthiness, love, and belonging revealed toe significance of personal vulnerability. This finding sends her into a personal breakdown as she realizes that research, all for toe sake of controlling and predicting, points to toe importance of giving up toe need to control. The point ofher talk moves to “this is what 1 learned.” Some preachers may hear Brown interjecting too much ofher own story, but in fact, as she tells her stoty, she enacts toe vulnerability that is her idea worth spreading. In fact, her message is not too far from a Christian teaching, that choosing to be appropriately vulnerable, real, and human leads to fullness oflife. Anotherofmy favorite TED talkers,Nigerian authorChimamandaNgozi Adichie, tolls ٢٠toe danger of a single story when it comes to a particular people ٢٠culture by telling significant parts ofher own story.* She demonstrates toe effects ofa dearth ٢٠ Nigerian stories,describing how she wrotechildhood stories based onBritish literature toll of people talking about toe weather and eating apples, although to her culture people rarely discussed toe weather and ate mangoes. Also with humor and insight, she relays boto toe misguided assumptions ofher American college roommate about
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people from Africa as well as her own suppositions about natives of Mexico, based on the monolithic stories of poverty and need told in the media. With her signature bent and sensitivity, Adichie weaves her own multiple stories, such as describing a young man who worked in her childhood home, whom she knew only as poor until she visited him in his own home and saw the beauty ofthe baskets made by his hardworking family. Telling her own stories, she demonstrates not only the danger ofa single story, but the beauty that emerges in a multiplicity of stories, some still waiting to be told. Although she tells her own stories, she is never the heroine, but rather a vessel for the transformation ofthe audience as she describes her own transformation. TED speakers remain vessels in the ways they move on stage and project their personae. On stage, they are generally bathed by spotlights and clothed in neat but understated street clothes, while the door around them is dark and spare, a simple curtain ٢٠projection screen ٢٠a few well-placed props in the background. Although the format is clearly a lecture, speakers rarely use podiums ٢٠lecterns, and most speak without notes. Effective speakers move naturally and with intention. Some remain still, as Adichie does, but others use their body movement to express their message. Fashion model Cameron Russell arrives on camera in a slinky black dress and heels but wraps a skirt around and steps into comfortable shoes to make her point that how we look makes a difference in how we are perceived, and so much ٢٠how models look is pure artifice.؟ My favorite example ofthe power ofa speaker’s embodying his words comes from conductor Benjamin Zander, who persuades his audience that everyone can love and understand classical music.6 Flaying the piano, he demonstrates the evolution ofa person’s musicianship from hesitant choppiness to nuanced phrases, as he ends leaning on his right side. Be calls this “one buttock” playing. “The music pushed me over,” he says, as the audience has clearly seen and heard. Zander’s personal excitement about his music and message pours out into the pacing and intonation of his speech. His facial expressions and energetic movement at tire piano and among the audience communicate his good news. Classical music is simply exciting, even when he plays Chopin’s poignant “Frelude in E Minor.” The conductor’s entire persona stems from his own belief in his message, and the camera panning faces in the audience reveals that his belief becomes contagious. One wonders how preachers might be so infectious. Many speakers infect their audience with more than words. TED talks also model effective use ofimages. Visual presentations, called “slide decks” in the tech world, use simple photographs, charts, ٢٠mini videos and tend to be short on words and long on impact. More than a FowerFoint outline ofa lecture, a powerful slide deck uses a few clear pictures or graphics. The best slides show no more than one sentence ٢٠statistic. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s lecture describing the different moral roots of liberals and conservatives exemplifies how a few faces or logos can make a pointy Whether ٢٠not his premises and conclusions are correct, his slides of Michelangelo’s David ox the blue pill ٢٠red pill example from The Matrix clarify and reinforce his words on the evolution of morel minds. In contrast, and deviating from foe norm in some terms, Ryan Lobo’s photographs enhance foe audience’s emotional connection to his subjects.8 His tells his story using images ofa repentant former warlord in Liberia, described as a prolific mass murderer , who now seeks forgiveness from his victims and their relatives. Lobo helps foe
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audience both to bear the unbearable and to wonder at the possibility of forgiveness in images ofa man asking to be pardoned by the surrounding people whose lives he scarred ٢٠ruined. Although not intentionally religious, his photographs capture far better than words alone foe theological dilemma of asking for mercy. Watching each of these talks and noting foe speakers’ relative approaches to storytelling, embodying their messages, and using images, preachers gain a new resource for growing their own styles. Allowing that TED speakers prepare for a single talk rather than a weekly sermon ٢٠that they stand on a stage rather than in a chancel or pulpit, preachers may still experience and reflect critically on others who believe they share good news. Those who communicate foe Christian gospel may also explore foe magnified influence of the social medium in spreading a powerful spoken word, given the number of ways one lecture may be shared. While many individual preachers currently use podcasting, and a few preach weekly on foe audio version Day Due, imagine what might happen through a web site with links to TED ؟uality preaching videos. Those interested in TED as a preaching resource may set a few guidelines for themselves, including not watching more than two talks in a sitting, ending early if a talk is not interesting after three minutes, and maintaining healthy skepticism regarding any speaker’s claim or method of communication, ?reachers may then reflect on what was effective about foe talk and consider one approach they will incorporate in conveying foe Word they preach. This Advent, ٢٠any season in traditional church or beyond, people remain hungry for good news, for good words, for ideas worth spreading. We all crave something more than ideas for words like peace, hope, joy, and love to come to life, for foe Word to be made flesh once again. With apologies to the recent lectionary commentary series, we all want to “feast on the Word.” As you prepare to feed others with your words, what testimony might you share out of your own experience of light coming into darkness? What will you do to embody foe good news ٤٠Christ coming, a message so wonderful that it pours forth from your preaching persona? What images ٢٠ phrases will clarify that message for you and for your hearers? As you prepare, may you be fed by foe Spirit at work in all kinds of people with ideas worth sharing. May the Word leave you wanting more.
Notes 1 Brown, Brené, “The ?ower of Vulnerability,” Filmed June 2010, TEDxHouston, 20:19, http://www. ted.eot^tal^rene.brow^on^ulnerhilit^. 2 Cuddy, Amy, “Your body language shapes who you are,” filmed June 2012, TEDGlobal 2 0 0 2 :ﻟﻤﺢ2ل . http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy__your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are. 3 Sinek, Simon, “How great leaders inspire action,” filmed September 2009, TEDxBuget Sound, 18:04, http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action. 4 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, “The danger of a single story,” filmed July 2009, TEDGlobal 2009, 18:49, http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story. 5 Russell, Cameron, “Eooks aren’t e¥erything, Believe me, I’m a model,” filmed October 2012, TEDxMidAtlantic, 9:37, http://www.ted.com /talk/ra lieve me i m a model. 6 Zander, Benjamin, “The transformative power of classical music,” filmed February 2008,TED2008, 20:43,http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion. 7 Haidt, Jonathan, “The moral roots of liberals and conservatives,” filmed March 2008, TED2008, 18:42,http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind. 8 Eobo, Ryan, “Fhotographing the hidden story,” filmed November 2009, TEDlndia 2009, 11:20, http://www.ted.com/talks/ryan_lobo_through_the_lens_of_compassion.
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